


My Favorite Neighbor

by MHWK



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Eve, F/M, Family Drama, Gender-neutral Reader, M/M, Reader-Insert, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MHWK/pseuds/MHWK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on BBCSherlock Imagines: "Imagine making a gingerbread house together with Lestrade" and "Imagine baking Christmas cookies with Lestrade."</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Favorite Neighbor

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly I have crappy family gatherings and writing this made me feel better after Christmas.

A knock on your bedroom door roused you from your sleep. It was early Christmas Eve, but from the first day of the month it was simply hell. Carolers, insane shoppers. You had bought groceries at the beginning of the month and closed yourself off in your house in an attempt to sleep through the end of the year. 

Now there was a knock at your bedroom door, which made you groan in annoyance because the only person that had a key to your house was your favorite person in the world, your next door neighbor.

“It’s open,” you called.

Slowly, the door creaked open and you mentally instructed yourself to fix that squeaking sound the moment it was safe to leave the house again.

“Hey,” Lestrade said softly. 

You lifted your arm that had been laid over your eyes and looked to him tiredly.

He smiled. That million dollar smile and those dark brown eyes. No matter how long his day had been at work, when he looked at you, he always seemed happy enough to smile like there was nothing better. 

“Hey,” you replied.

“Still in hiding?” he asked.

You nodded.

“I know you hate Christmas,” he said, “but I could really use your help.”

Sarcastically, you replied, “Are you having a party, Detective Inspector?”

He stood a little straighter and his smile faltered. “Yes, actually,” he said. 

You sat up in bed, alarmed at how he had taken your words. “What can I help you with, Sir?” you asked a little too formal.

He bit back a smile. “You’re a shit, sometimes,” he said.

“Would you really have me any other way?” you replied.

Greg Lestrade chuckled nervously. Even in the dim light of your room you could see his face flush.

“Get out,” you told him. “I need to get dressed. Then you can tell me what you’re doing in my house.”

He laughed a little louder and closed the door.

He knew your stance on Christmas, on large holidays in general. It had to be something big for him to even ask for your help around this time of the year.

You dragged yourself out of bed and managed to dress in the baggiest sweat pants and an oversized hoodie that had one day showed up in your drawers. There was no telling where it had come from or who had left it behind. 

Flipping the hood up, you left your room, your bare feet tapping on the tile floor. 

Lestrade stood in your kitchen, looking through your cabinets.

“The illegal narcotics are beneath the sink,” you told him and he quickly rounded on you.

“That’s not funny,” he said seriously.

You smiled. “Right,” you said. “What’re you looking for?”

“Cookie sheet? Also something I can build a gingerbread house on?” he asked.

“You’re baking?” you asked.

“You are so judgemental,” he huffed.

You feigned offense. “Excuse you!,” you shot back. “I happen to think very highly of a man that can bake!”

“Is that so?” he asked.

You narrowed your eyes at him and pointed to a bottom cabinet. Then you told him, “I don’t know shit about a gingerbread house. I’ve never made one.”

“Yeah?” he said, “Me neither. But you’re smart so I could use your help.”

The compliment was not unwanted, but it was unexpected and you fought to keep him from seeing the blush that had surely appeared on your face. 

“Do I have to leave the house for this?” you asked roughly.

“Unless you want to clean your kitchen, we’ll have to use mine,” he said. “And I have all of the ingredients at my house.”

You groaned and went looking for your sandals. When you met Lestrade at the door, he held several of your baking pans. He looked down at your footwear and said, “Do you… Have you even looked out the window?”

“It’s snowing, isn’t it?” you asked blandly. You hated snow.

“It is,” he said.

You trudged back to find your boots and a thicker pair of socks. When you returned, he chuckled. Your boots were laced up outside of your sweat pants. 

“Game on,” you said.

He lead you next door to his home and you hesitantly entered behind him. Your house was clean, mostly because you lived in only two rooms, but his was pristine. He had obviously spent time cleaning it recently. You could smell the bleach.

“Make yourself at home,” he said.

You laughed, a little rougher than intended. “You don’t want me to do that, Greg.”

He replied, “Kick your shoes off, go ahead.” 

You were more comfortable barefoot than you could ever be in shoes, but he had said it was okay so your boots were the first thing to disappear. 

Wooden floors. You had half a mind to put your socks back on and slide across the living room. A glance around the living room and you frowned. It was unusually sparse. There were no pictures on the walls. There was furniture, but it was too neat. You suspected his wife had taken more than just the nicer things when she had left. The house felt empty, even with so much stuff in it.

“Cookies first?” he asked from across the house and you trotted over to the kitchen. 

“Whatever you want,” you told him. 

He pulled out a recipe and started reading measurements for peanut butter cookies. You couldn’t help the fact that your mouth watered at just the mention of fresh peanut butter cookies. You could make them on your own, sure, but it was always something that needed to be made for company, and you just never had people over. 

Before the cookies were ready to go in the oven, you took a fork and created the little hatched marks atop the cookies. You smiled to yourself and a glance at Greg showed you that he was smiling too. It was nice to see him smiling when he wasn’t breaking into your house unannounced. He hadn’t smiled much since his wife had finally moved out. 

Cookies in the oven and the timer set, he went to the dining room table and set down a box. It was a pre-packaged gingerbread house. You breathed a sigh of relief. Cookies were one thing, gingerbread was entirely out of your league. It was one of those things that happy families did, and you had never had one of those families. 

“I got a few of these,” he said. “In case the first one or two don’t look much like what we want it to look like.”

“Practice gingerbread,” you muttered.

“Precisely,” he replied.

The box open, you carefully looked through the contents. “You said you had more?” you asked.

Lestrade stood up straight and turned to look at you. “Yes…” he said cautiously.

“We should make a gingerbread castle,” you said, imagining the many ways to put them together.

“Think we can manage that? I’m not very creative,” he said.

You bumped him. “Don’t sell yourself short, Greggie,” you told him. “Now how many of these things did you get?”

He left the table for a moment and returned with four more boxes. Your eyes widened. They couldn’t have been cheap. In fact, you knew they weren’t cheap. 

“Think we’d screw up enough to need all of them?” you asked.

“I bought five in case you weren’t going to help me. I’d just end up piecing a bunch of crumbs together,” he said.

“I think we can manage something great together,” you said optimistically. You noted your lightening attitude and frowned. 

He seemed to have noted your optimism and your displeasure of it and grinned broadly. “Seems like the Christmas spirit is wearing off on you,” he said.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” you replied. “Let us build!”

Before you started, you lined the table with aluminum foil and began building the foundation. The white icing was difficult to work with. Setting the walls took him holding the pieces in place and you working as fast as possible trying to make even lines with the sticky decorations. 

Finished with one block, you brushed back your hair and scratched the tip of your nose where an itch had started. Greg returned from setting in a second tray of cookies and setting the timer and when his attention landed on you he smiled.

“What?” you asked.

He touched his nose. “You have frosting on your face,” he said.

You wiped your nose haphazardly.

“You just kind of… smeared it,” he said. 

He stepped close to you and gently ran his thumb across your cheek. The touch burned against your skin. You weren’t sure if it made you uncomfortable or ecstatic. In response, you put a little bit of icing on your finger and swiped it across his nose. 

He stared at you and you couldn’t help but laugh. He seemed so confused. 

“Sorry,” you chuckled. “I guess we should finish this before your guests arrive, right?”

You quickly reined in your humor. He wiped his face and appeared much too serious. This was why you didn’t play around. When it actually happened, people didn’t want it. Or, you had just read too much into it. You had thought it was okay. It had been okay, hadn’t it? He had initiated contact first, it should have been okay. 

You berated yourself. You could write interaction between two people flawlessly. You could write a novel about body language but for some reason, when it came to your own interactions you felt that the were always wrong.

Another block of the castle done and Greg went to retrieve the cookies. With him gone for a moment, you tried to collect your thoughts. You decided that the moment the two of you were done with the gingerbread monstrosity, you’d just head home. You said you would help and you wouldn’t go back on that, but remaining afterward would be putting yourself too close to inviting yourself to his party and that was the last thing you wanted to do. 

With the last tray of cookies in the oven, you worked faster when he returned. If you had just settled with that simple gingerbread house, you wouldn’t be taking up so much of his time. That was probably why he was so quiet.

“Y/N,” he said and you looked up. “Can you handle the rest of this? I have to finish decorating the house.”

“Yeah, sure,” you replied. “Do what you’ve got to do.”

With him not standing so close, you felt like you could breathe easier. Your thoughts were still occupied as you continued building. Had you misjudged everything? He was just your friendly neighbor. And you were his crabby neighbor. 

Your jaw clenched tight and your hands began to shake. You were friends, right? That was why you had given him your key to your house. Had that been such an odd thing to do? 

He had knocked on your door several months ago to check on you. You had been deep in a session of writing and hadn’t gone outside in weeks, but he had come over to check on you. After doing it twice in a month and ruining your writing mood, you sarcastically offered him your house key. “If you care that damn much!” you had told him as you held out your spare. 

It had surprised you that he had taken it and continued to check on you. The two of you had often had late dinners at your table when he had worked late and you hadn’t gone to bed yet. It had been nice having someone to speak to. When you went for groceries, you even bought some of his favorites for when he visited. 

Your conversations had been amicable, hadn’t they? You dared to say that the two of you were friends with some of the ridiculous things you had talked about, and the serious things as well. You knew about his wife, his ex-wife, and that she had cheated and left him. You couldn’t relate, you’d never been married and never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a few nights. You just weren’t the type to form relationships. They were too difficult. You blamed family for that. Relationships, partnerships, they were just frightening. There wasn’t a single marriage that you knew of that worked, that people were happy in. That was why you wrote best-selling romance fiction. It was all fantasy to you. It didn’t exist, and people ate it up.

Greg Lestrade’s predicament was just a perfect example.

Putting the finishing touches on the top, decorating with peppermints and gumdrops, you finally stood back and took a look at your work. You had to give yourself a hand, it looked pretty good. The parts he had helped on looked better, but that was mostly because you were nitpicking your own work.

Looking up, you found the house decorated with lights. There was even a tree. You frowned. How long had you been working on that thing? You glanced outside. It was getting late. It was past time to go home. 

Anxiety started to well up in your stomach. You didn’t want to be around when his guests began to show. You weren’t dressed for an event.

“Greg!” you called as you stepped away from the table. You looked around. He wasn’t there. 

You quickly decided you’d apologize later for skipping out and went to put on your socks and boots. 

As you laced up your boots, the door opened and Lestrade entered in his coat, snow coated his hair and shoulders.

“Taking off?” he asked.

“Yeah, before your people show up and my anti-social ass ruins your party,” you joked.

Lestrade sighed. “No one’s coming,” he said. 

“Oh…” you said, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t invite anyone.”

You stared at him. That didn’t make sense.

He closed the door behind him and the house suddenly felt too warm. 

“What do you mean?” you asked slowly.

“We’ve been neighbors for a few years,” he said. “You always go into hiding during holidays, worse during Christmas. And several books you’ve written lately mention peanut butter cookies.”

You frowned. Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade had read your work? He definitely wasn’t your target audience. 

“I imagined,” he said, “that you never really had a good Christmas. So I wanted to try.”

Your chest felt tight. 

“You… wanted to try?” you managed to say.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. 

You stared at him. 

He offered you his hand and you took it hesitantly. It was only then that you saw the decorating he had done. It had just been a glance before, but now you saw the lights around the room, the way they twinkled. He left you for just a moment and retrieved a tray of cookies from the kitchen. 

You took one, took a bite from it, and then grabbed another as you shoved the rest of the first one into your mouth. 

It was then that he saw the gingerbread castle and his jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?” he laughed. “That’s amazing.”

Your face flushed. “It’s not that… that good,” you stuttered.

He made a face and set down the plate of cookies. “Fine, the best parts are when I helped!” he said.

You smirked. “I thought the same.”

You looked over the tree, decorated in older ornaments. It wasn’t something overly stylized, but something that held memories of years past. There were even old cards sitting in the branches. The star on top was silver and blue. You felt that it fit very well. 

There was a single gift beneath the tree, but you didn’t think anything of it. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t yours. They were never yours.

“This way,” he said and took your hand in his once more. 

He led you outside and the cold hit you harder than you expected. The snow was falling. It was a White Christmas, just like all the annoying Christmas songs at the stores always mentioned. Somehow, actually seeing it made it less annoying. Even if you hated snow. 

The lights strung up on the outside of his house lit up in pulsing colors. Blue to red to green. Behind those were lights that looked like icicles. The decorations made you smile, knowing that someone had strung those lights just for you.

Holding your hand a little tighter, he asked, “When was the last time you played in the snow?” 

You couldn’t remember. Before you hated snow. You couldn’t remember before you hated snow. But making a snow angel sounded like a really neat thing to do. Or a building a snowman. 

You smiled, glanced behind you, and let yourself fall into the snow. 

You weren’t wearing thick enough clothes, and soon after dropping into it, the cold and wet bit into you and you sprung to your feet and rushed indoors. He laughed as he followed you inside. 

He retrieved warmer clothes for you to change into and you retreated to his room to dress. Still, his room felt vacant. It lacked the warmth of a place someone lived in. Was that why he spent so much time at your house? He was a regular visitor, enough to earn a key.

His casual clothes were much too big for you, but they were warm. When you stepped out, he gave you a heavy blanket and you wrapped it around yourself. 

“Still hate Christmas?” he asked.

Your brows drew together. “Probably,” you replied.

He took a deep breath and said, “I have something for you. Or, for me… If you don’t want to use it don’t worry about it. I just… I didn’t want to hang it up. No pressure.”

You watched him walk to the tree and pull out the small box from under it. He handed it to you and you watched him for a moment. He seemed as uncertain as you felt. 

Pulling the end of the green ribbon it came undone and you opened the little white box. Inside was a little plant with white berries. The stem was tied with a thin red ribbon. You knew exactly what it was. You had researched mistletoe for an absurd Christmas romance story. 

Greg Lestrade had given you mistletoe. He had said it was for you, or for him. You frowned at the little clipping of leaves. Slowly, you closed the box and held it out to him. 

He nodded and took it back from you. “I-I’m sorry…” he said softly. “I--”

You cut his words short with your lips. You stood on your toes and kissed him. You didn’t need a stupid plant in hanging above you to kiss him. For everything that he had done, your favorite person had only become more special. He gave you your space, checked up on you when you disappeared, and went out of his way to try to know you better. 

His arms wrapped around you and held you tightly against him. Whether or not things would change didn’t matter, because you knew he gave a damn. And if anyone had a chance at a working out, it was the two of you. After all, you both knew, things were better when you did them together. 

“Want to decorate the cookies?” he asked.

“Are you crazy?” you asked him. “You don’t decorate peanut butter cookies!”

You smiled as he went to the kitchen for the sprinkles and frosting. You hoped that every Christmas to come would end with you protecting the peanut butter cookies from Greg Lestrade’s attempt to decorate them.


End file.
